I've been working with Lee for five years in the IBM Advanced Technology
Group. I have worked on a variety of projects in areas including SashXB (a
Javascript-based development platform for creating Linux desktop
applications) [1], cluster computing and monitoring, and, most recently,
the Semantic Web. I have worked on several of our group's Semantic Web
projects, including a backend RDF store and an Eclipse-based research
application. Most recently, I have been working on semi-structured text
searching within RDF and a web application framework backed by our RDF
store.
Lee:
I've been working with Wing for five years in the IBM Advanced Technology
Group. During that time, my work has included DHTML-based runtimes for
creating Windows desktop applications [2], instant messaging, and
structured annotation systems. The lessons learned from building a
knowledge-collection system combined with the needs of the Life Sciences
community spurred my initial interest in semantic technologies. Over the
past year I've worked on Glitter, a SPARQL engine designed to adapt to a
variety of backend data sources, among other projects. I'm a member of the
W3C Data Access Working Group (working on SPARQL) and an off-and-on
participant in both the Semantic Web Interest Group and the Semantic Web
Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group.
Both:
The Advanced Technology Group has been working in the Semantic Web space
for the past few years. Our goal is to demonstrate the benefits of
integrating semantics into all layers of the enterprise application stack
by building infrastructure and components for a new generation of flexible,
data-driven applications. Our application scenarios were initially heavily
influenced by the needs of the life-sciences research community in Boston
and around the world, but we believe that Semantic-Web-based applications
have the potential to revolutionize any of a wide variety of data-intensive
industries. Our plan is to open source our projects to drive innovation and
interest in this area.
Between writing about the Semantic Web, putting together "marketing"
materials for internal and external presentations, and anticipating our
open source release, we are both very excited to be a part of this group.
As others have said, we think that there is a wide range of misinformed
opinions about the Semantic Web and its constituent technologies, and we
feel that education can go a long way towards dispelling some of these
opinions and towards helping organizations realize the potential benefits
of semantic technologies.
At the heart of our efforts is Boca, our enterprise backend RDF store that
features client replication, real-time update notification, transactions,
revision tracking, and authentication with role-based permissions.
Some of our projects are tools that simplify working with the Semantic Web.
* Jastor, a tool to generate Java beans from OWL ontologies [3]
* Telar, a compositional, lens-based framework for generating
user-interfaces to view and edit RDF data within Eclipse-based applications
We have built several experimental systems to work closely with Boca.
* Slingshot, a distributed dynamic workflow engine;
* DDR, a write-once, read-only, metadata rich binary object repository
* Bombadil, a semantics-aware annotation server.
* Queso, a web application framework
* Salsa, a spreadsheet application (based on OpenOffice)
We have also develped a Perl 5 library for manipulating, parsing, and
serializing RDF data. All of our technologies make heavy use of LSIDs [4]
as our core naming mechanism.
We both live in the Boston area and work in nearby Cambridge, so let us
know if you'd like to stop by to visit the lab.
[1]
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-sashxb/?t=gr,lnxw02=sashXB
[2] http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/aw.nsf/techmain/sash
[3] Jastor - http://jastor.sourceforge.net
[4] http://lsid.sourceforge.net
Wing Yung
Internet Technology
wingyung@us.ibm.com
617.693.3763